Radio Silence

Phew, what a year.
I wonder if this still works...

Wide Characters

Here's how to output wide characters (i.e., wchar_t) to the console in Visual Studio 2010 using a Multi-Byte character set environment. Most likely, this option must be set manually since Microsoft suggest Unicode by default. This setting prevents certain functions from being changed to their <method>W versions but i guess that's a matter of taste. All it takes is a single call to _setmode() with the second parameter indicating the expected character type. In the case of UTF-16 (two bytes) this is _O_U16TEXT. After that, the character type can be switched back to ASCII using the _O_TEXT option.

:: CODE BLOCK ::

_setmode(_fileno(stdout), _O_U16TEXT);
std::wcout<<L"Hello World"<<L"\n";  
_setmode(_fileno(stdout), _O_TEXT);  

Wide Character Output

Of course, the console's font must be set to something that can handle all used characters (e.g., Lucida Sans Unicode). The complete Unicode table can be found ▷here.

Universal Joint

Concept model and example animation of a universal joint. Note the non-linear force transmission for greater angles in the middle of the video. The error can be nullified by coupling two joints with identical angles to the intermediate shaft (cf. second video).

Turtle

Cleaning up a fossil hard disk drive so here's some space glider from 2008 that i found today.

Spider Draft

Concept design for a mechanical battle spider which will be modelled (maybe) and animated (maybe) later.

Basic Armor (2)

Another concept design for a hazmat suit including a gas mask in comparison with the previous model.

Collatz Conjecture

Please keep in mind that the length of a ▷sequence doesn't really correlate with the initial number (with the exception of certain numbers).

Number	Sequence

Smoke Volumes

A man has completed his duty.

Within the framework of my Master Thesis, I developed a tool named Smoker to analyse certain characteristics of turbulent flow. In a nutshell, it's about the real-time visualization of unsteady vector fields using a smoke volume metaphor. The following screenshots were generated using a Borromean data set.

The thesis is available ▷here in english, full length and free of charge.

Basic Armor

Concept design for a simple hazmat suit using slots for optional items and additional layers of armor.

Ambiguities

I received word that my dear ▷Baby shares its name with this product here. In this context i'd like to state that i hereby call dibs upon the respective term.

Plague Doctor

A plague doctor. May or may not have something to do with an ongoing project of mine. Possibly.

Zone Trooper (5)

Quick scribble. Trooper chilling in the Zone.

Zone Division Art

Zone Trooper (4)

Another one.

Zone Division

The Zone Division is the mysterious core of the M-2 defence system responsible for various tasks of the mandatory field deployment. Originally, it was strictly prohibited to leave or enter quarantined territory due to the high risk of contamination. This was the rule for a few months but the authorities quickly realized that contact with the Zone population had to be maintained for various reasons. The solution was a waterproof concept to bring specialized personnel into the Zone and back safely. The Zone Division was born. Its most important tasks can be roughly categorized in the following blocks.

▶Protection

▶Escort

▶Transport

▶Liquidation

Since Zone Troopers are permanently exposed to extreme dangers, certain safety mechanisms were developed to allow the Division to work in contaminated areas without posing a threat to the integrity of the ▷MCB.

▶Pulse Detector Implants With increased understanding of the disease and the propagation of detector technology it became possible to assert the infection status of a subject at extremely high accuracy. Such detectors are permanently carried by Zone Troopers (e.g., in the brain) and determine whether the trooper may re-enter the ▷MCB or any non-quarantined facilities.

▶Emergency Injection In the case of an acute infection, the protocol allows the use of highly concentrated ▷Co-60 within the first few seconds. Possible results of this method are death, failure and infection or the successful suppression of a primary infection. If the subject is still alive after a few minutes and no pulse traces can be found, it is safe to conclude that an infection had been avoided. Note that an acquired infection is non-reversible and the trooper is to be discharged instantly and left behind.

▶Virostatic Infusion Precautions and heavy armor do not provide unlimited safety in certain areas of the zone. In fact, the members of the Zone Divison fall victim to contaminating incidents on a monthly basis. Since field-trained specialists are a scarce resource, the authorities agreed on certain strategies to increase the efficiency and survival rate of the Co-60 injections. One way to accomplish this, is a regular infusion of low-energy inhibitors (e.g., a diluted version of ▷Tc-99m). It can be observed that some veterans of the Division develope a high resistance to radiation and even immunity to low-dosed infections. Of course, only a few troopers reach that impressive level of adaption, which certainly adds to the creepy aura the Zone Division emits.

Next

▶Art Gives you a list of all Zone Division related art.

MCB Satellite Photo

Satellite photograph of the entire zone with a schematic overlay of serveral sights including the ▷MCB (outward outline), several tracks of the ▷Monorail system, the locations of major villages and facilities as well as ▷Ground Zero (image center) and the surrounding ▷Death Zone.

Ir-192

Iridium emitter (ca. 500 keV)

Co-60

Cobalt emitter (ca. 2000 keV)

Tc-99m

The metastable isotope Technetium-99m is the main ingredient for the Tc-99m inhibitor. Originally used in the field of nuclear medicine, Tc-99m provides medium supression (ca. 140 keV) and managable long term damage due to its fast decay.

Infection Inhibitor

Inhibitors are used to temporary stall the infection rate during exposure. Depending on the inhibitor type, they do not reduce or cure existing infections. The ▷Zone Division uses strong infection inhibitors during incubation time in the event of a primary infection. If applied quickly, chances are that the virus can be eliminated from the host's body before it can bind permanently. If the virus has fused with a host's nervous system irreversibly, inhibitors are still widely used to contain temporary infection peaks. (e.g, a secondary infection, crossing contaminated areas, weak immune system). Since all inhibitor products contain radioactive substances surpressing the virus' activity, they need to be consumed with additional medications against ARS (acute radiation syndrome) and to minimize long term damage.

The following inhibitors can be aquired.

Shooter

Hmm...

Update

The Darc Library (C++) is now updated as of March, 2012. Click ▷here too browse the entire solution.

ABC - Flow

Streamline integration on the so called ABC-Flow using CUDA, OpenGL and an illumination shader.

Mechanical

It's thursday, so i decided to clean up some antique folders located on even more ancient hard drives, and look what i found!

Believe it or not, but there'a actually some footage illustrating a basic walking cycle. Note how our robotic friend greets the audience towards the end. Cute.

Monster

Yet another member in the four-armed creature department.

Quotes

It's not the beard on the outside that counts, it's the beard on the inside.

Some Skinny Guy

Testing highlighs in overlay mode. Needs more depth.

Zombies

Dusted off my graphics tablet so here's a quick drawing of a zombie-like creature. For your convenience, available in two colors.

Multi-Label Search

Dear Google,

thank you for making me do this.

Anyway, i found a way to extend the Blogspot-Built-In search engine for labels. As you may know the URL www.[NAME].blogspot.com/search/label/[LABEL] will return all posts tagged with the respective label. Unfortunately it is currently (to the best of my knowledge) impossible to pass a combination of labels or to apply binary operators.

Luckily, such a feature is available for feeds using the feed URL www.[NAME].blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/[A]/[B]. This will give you the result corresponding to ([A] AND [B]), or in other words, all posts that are tagged with both labels. Also, the result will be formatted in XML so here's a list of all the stuff you need to do to get going.

▶XML Loader Write a JavaScript function that will call the feed URL after appending the labels you're looking for.

▶XML Parser Write another JavaScript function that receives the output of the XML Loader and parses the document for the pieces of information you need. Commonly, that would be the title, the author, the content, or a link to the actual post.

▶List Post Publish a post on your Blog containing both functions and make the XML Parser load the formatted result into an empty <div></div> block. You're going to need a post for every new combination, or include a text box for dynamic search. This blog contains a number of such Multi-Label search posts, each tagged with the label "Proxy".

If you're too busy to do it yourself, just take a look at the code of one of the local posts tagged with the label "Proxy". Feel free to use the referenced scripts.

Web Man

This is what i do while actually having a gazillion better and more important things to do. I named the daily hero "Web Man" to avoid copyright conflicts with Mr. Lee.

Andrej Baykal

Character description following soon...

Goodbye

A very touching key moment in the R.E.E.V.A. universe. The ▷gentleman in the armored hazmat suit is the architect of this ▷contraption here.

R.E.E.V.A. Character

R.E.E.V.A. Art

Saiga

Character description following soon... 

Emilee E. Sorokin

The E. stands for Elizabeth or something like that...

Kary Sanger

Character description following soon...

R.E.E.V.A Story

Dr. William Griffith

Character description following soon...

His Majesty, Pumpy Darc

Ya, he's got four ears. Cool, huh?

The A-Team

A self-portrait of me and the A-Team and some aimless coloring. Why the name? Good question!